Krystal Gonzalez prays everyday, normally while on a walk in nature. Sometimes her daughter or another one of her three surviving children will walk alongside her. Other times Krystal is alone with God and the memory of Aaliyah.
When she lost her daughter, Gonzalez began to study how other cultures handle death.
“In Indian culture, there was a tradition that when a person dies in the family, not just the household, but in the family, each person moves a piece of furniture,” Gonzalez says, “When they wake up in the morning, there's this visual representation that everything has changed. Because everything has changed.”
Gonzalez insists on meeting at a busy Starbucks near the BWI-Marshall airport. It’s where Aaliyah worked, perfecting the latest caffeinated concoctions as she counted down the days to when she would start class at Anne Arundel Community College.
“She comes home… all jittery and stuff. And she's like, ‘Mom, but I had nitro and I had a shot of this…’ and I'm like, ‘Well, maybe first of all, nitro doesn't sound like something you should be drinking!’” Gonzalez remembers as a smile pulls at her lips.
On July 1st, 2023, Aaliyah would fold up her green apron for the last time. She and a friend would go to the annual Brooklyn Day block party at Brooklyn Homes, a housing project in south Baltimore. A night of dancing and food ended in gunfire.
Aaliyah was fatally shot. 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi was also killed.
Twenty-eight people were also shot and survived with various injuries; most of those victims were teenagers. It is considered the worst mass shooting in Baltimore’s modern history.
No one has been charged with the murder of Aaliyah or Kylis.
Five people have been charged with gun crimes and other charges, including attempted first-degree murder, related to the Brooklyn Day shooting. Four people have pleaded guilty to their charges.
The Baltimore Police Department confirmed that the investigation is still active and ongoing.
A difficult recovery that has only just begun
While police set to investigating, including a look into their own failures, Mayor Brandon Scott pledged resources and victims’ services.
But for Gonzalez, those fell short.
“What resources do you need? That's such a broad question,” she says. “It would be helpful to say, hey, you have family members coming into town. Did you need toiletries? … you have to arrange a funeral for your daughter: do you need help with flower arrangers? Do you need help with someone even navigating to find funeral homes? That would be helpful.”
Just days after the shooting, a representative from the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, or MONSE, gave Gonzalez an address to a place where a representative could help them with wrap-around services. As the family drove closer to the requested address they realized they were being brought back to Brooklyn Homes: the place their daughter was killed.
“I was being brought back to the scene of the death of my daughter without my knowledge… it was very re-traumatizing. I was physically shaking”
It left her trust shattered.
“[MONSE] has to be an office that is for survivors, run by survivors,” she said.
A representative for MONSE wrote in a statement to WYPR that the Victims Services team “is made up of professionals who are intimately familiar with trauma, including having direct experience with losing someone or being impacted by gun violence. This familiarity and their passion for victim services work makes them uniquely suited to support survivors.”
The agency confirmed that it did use Brooklyn Homes as a hub for services in the wake of the shooting.
Holistic victims services are a relatively new venture for the city. After a 2021 report between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Public Safety Partnership found that Baltimore was failing to meet the needs of gun violence victims, both MONSE and the police department expanded services.
But sometimes, especially due to longstanding historical mistrusts, some victims don’t feel comfortable going to those agencies.
“When someone loses their child to gun violence, the first thing they want to do is blame the city, right? And we cannot sit there and try to belittle how they feel,” said Lisa Molock, executive director of Let’s Thrive Baltimore. Molock herself also lost a partner, goddaughter, and niece: all to gun violence. Let’s Thrive does both preventative violence interruption services in communities, like connecting at-risk people to resources, and also providing resources to those who have already been victimized.
“You have to be very sensitive to them. Even with the services that you're offering them, you have to ask their permission to actually cross those boundaries, or have them do certain things, you have to ask them,” explained Molock, who over the years has learned the delicate ways of building trust with victims and their families.
She often finds herself as a mediary between victims and city services
Eventually, Molock was able to build a bridge between Gonzalez and the city. MONSE was able to connect the oldest Gonzalez son with rental and employment assistance.
“MONSE has been a breath of fresh air, I’m not going to lie to you,” said Molock.
The city looks to learn from worst mass shooting
MONSE is still active in the Brooklyn Homes community.
“From the beginning, we’ve been clear that this wasn’t just our team coming in for a short period of time and dropping out,” said Jack French, a spokesperson for the agency.
French confirmed that 17 people are still actively working with MONSE for some type of wrap-around services including intensive case management, housing assistance, and relocation assistance.
A nearly 200 page after-action report to the Brooklyn Day shooting released by the Baltimore Police Department found that officers didn’t intervene earlier to the situation, despite 911 calls for help, because of a pattern of “officer indifference.” Ultimately, after an internal investigation the department terminated two BPD employees for their failures. There were 12 BPD officers, including civilian employees, who were disciplined for their actions with punishments including suspensions of two to four days without pay.
A representative for the department wrote to WYPR that BPD has committed to prioritizing community engagement.
“This includes hosting numerous community walks and events, working alongside city agencies to address quality of life problems and interagency coordination with other city agencies to prioritize city service requests in Brooklyn,” wrote Lindsey Eldridge, the director of BPD media relations. The department also reports crime in the Brooklyn neighborhood is down 36%.
For Gonzalez, healing has come through looking for solutions; she’s taken her advocacy to Governor Wes Moore. Gonzalez wants Brooklyn Day to be part of mandatory training for all law enforcement and public housing authorities in Maryland.
But most of her healing comes from remembering Aaliyah.
“If she was drawing a portrait of a woman, you could see the movement in the hair… the eyelashes, the specs in the eyeball, everything was so detailed,” Gonzalez remembers. Aaliyah, she said, got her artistic talent from her dad. But she was humble, she never bragged about it.
Through a new non-profit Gonzalez launched with assistance and guidance from Molock, she’s trying to help others do the same. With Redirecting Our Culture, Gonzalez hopes to give surviving family members a place to tell the stories of their loved ones who were taken by violence.
“We get to highlight and talk about our loved ones in a way that gives people a little insight into the personality of the life that was there, not the tragedy. Number two, it puts the mirror up to our communities to see what we are doing to ourselves. This is nothing but death and destruction, and we have to do something in order to live. Together, we've got to make some changes,” said Gonzalez.
Krystal will mark July 2nd with a festival in Anne Arundel County celebrating her daughter’s life. Baltimore City will hold a ‘healing’ memorial at Brooklyn Homes.
WYPR Update: This story has been updated with more context around Lisa Molock's quotes.
